The One That Breaks

Journal

I’m stranded in a hospital in a city where I’ve never been before, where I know no one. I am still shaking from the car crash. I feel like I’m existing in an alternate reality. I need to get out of here.

I think of a girl. A calligrapher who emailed me days ago. I email her back and I know it is a long shot but I ask for her help. Our story begins with her driving over an hour on her birthday to rescue me. Rain beats against the car windows and she buys me a hot coconut chai that warms my fingers. Her name is Emma.

She takes me to a house in the hills. My room has a big, cosy bed and I feel as though I’ve never seen anything so wonderful in my life. I hide beneath the covers of my cocoon; I am safe here and nothing can hurt me.

Emma invites me along to her birthday dinner. I want to keep hiding but I wonder if distraction is better. After all, I am alive, I should embrace life. We catch the bus into town and I write in my journal.

“I’ve realised something. I place too much importance on romantic love. But love is more than that. Love is a girl I’ve never met picking me up from the airport with flowers, love is my daughter thanking me for being her Mama, love is my best friend saving me the last piece of chocolate, love is the way I treat my body and the way I follow my heart.”

I’m surrounded by strangers at dinner. The crash plays over and over in my head. If I close my eyes I can feel it all over again. I mention it and it sounds so insignificant put to words but it feels devastating. I can’t pretend I’m fine. I disappear into the bathroom for a long time and I sob. I don’t understand why I’m being like this, people are in car crashes all the time.

On the way home Emma takes me into a place called The Garden of Unearthly Delight. I am plunged into wonderland. Trees drip with fairylights, we sit together in an old double-decker bus and there are so many market stalls with delicious foods. It’s like a switch has flicked inside me. Suddenly I’m euphoric. Life is so beautiful that it is almost painful. “I’m so happy I am alive to see this,” I tell Emma.

But later the fear returns. The car headlights blare behind my eyelids and I am hit over and over, thrown like I am nothing. I call the boy who occupies my heart and he talks to me until the sun comes up. “I’ll put a spell over you to protect you,” he promises, telling me to be quiet for a moment. “All done, you’re safe now,” he says. It makes me laugh and I imagine it’s true.

The very next day the media is buzzing with rumours about my friend Belle Gibson. Firstly that she lied about donating to charities and secondly that she never had terminal cancer, that it was all a lie. I remember sitting on her couch in tears because I was afraid she’d be gone soon, leaving behind her boy not much older than Alba. My calendar is still marked with the months she’d asked me to housesit for her book tour across America. The whole thing hurts me so deeply I become obsessed with it. I read articles, newspapers and watch people discuss it on television. I don’t know how to feel. With the car crash and the news, my mind is a scary place.

Emma’s presence is my solace. She has another desk across from hers in her workspace that becomes mine and there are moments where I lose myself so deeply in my writing that I forget anything else. But it’s been a few days now and I can’t take any more days off. I have to fly to Melbourne and throw myself back into working, ready or not.

When I’m shooting everything in the world feels just fine. There’s an invincibility when I am behind the camera. I don’t feel pain or cold or hunger. In some ways I’m hardly even there. I give a talk at a community centre to a group of aboriginal kids from broken families. They gather around me when I am finished, hugging me and thanking me. A girl says, “It’s inspiring that you started from nothing and did everything you have. You made me realise what I could do.” And I’m smiling genuinely for the first time since the crash.

Belle asks to see me. I still don’t know how I feel or how I’m supposed to feel, only that it must be right to go and help. Her house feels very different. The energy here is frightening. She is holding my hand and crying. Everything is falling apart. I don’t ask her if she has cancer or not, or why she would lie. Instead I share what’s been playing on my mind.

I tell her I think she should write a brutally honest open letter. To not be defensive but truly vulnerable and share, even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts. It’d be the hardest thing to do but ultimately the best thing. We are all human. Ultimately people just want to understand. I leave feeling good, like I have made some difference. I’m not sure I did. I leave at 4am to catch a flight to New Zealand.

I am staying in a mansion on a peninsula. From the great big windows I watch the sea spill in and out of the inlet each day. It’s like a painting out there. For three days I don’t leave this house. A shadow takes my place. I feel broken by the crash, by betrayal, by unrequited love and by my immense longing for my daughter. I feel so alone out here. I barely move, I barely eat and I barely exist.

On the fourth day I run out into the sunshine and stand on the hill above the water. Days were empty and now they are full of meetings, shoots and editing. I’m left with little time to think and it’s better this way. I stay with a girl called Ally. We drink wine and walk to a park late at night. We lay back against the grass beneath the stars and I listen to the slap of a basketball on concrete. I remember what it’s like to be young and to notice everything. To not be so lost inside my own head.

My journal is mostly about him. I am strong but he makes me weaker than I’ve ever known. I hardly recognise myself. My unwavering confidence wavers. Maybe I’m not beautiful enough. Maybe I’m not successful enough. Maybe I’ve ruined everything. I want to forget him, but he’s there in my thoughts more than I’d like to admit.

I board the smallest plane I’ve ever seen to a little town in the south island called Blenheim to shoot a campaign. I think about how he must have been on many planes this small and then I curse myself for bringing everything back to him. From the clouds I write in my journal.

“I think one day I’ll look back on this time and laugh about how crazy I felt about him. Maybe I’ll be with someone who shows me what healthy love is, someone truly good for me who makes me realise this pain wasn’t all for nothing and that everything will be okay. Or maybe I won’t and I will realise it anyway.”

The founder of Paper Rain is Indigo. She has bright long red hair and a contagious smile. She drives me through endless vineyards, engulfed by mountains all around. We stop by her orchard-turned-workshop where she screenprints with her lover, then by her friend’s house in her small hometown. I get this weird feeling that everyone we meet is just an actor and the houses are all sets. After a series of big cities this tiny town gives me the strangest feelings.

I have my own little studio. When I arrive there is a crate filled with gifts and a handmade skateboard engraved with Alba’s name. I get the inkling that I may have the best job of all. It is brilliant to be working with a small label, one that puts goodness above profit. Founders who become friends.

Every day begins in the cold, silent hour before sunrise. We all eat breakfast together. There are big bowls full of sweet ripe figs, apples and fejoias from nearby orchards. The food is all made with love. The locations are familiar to everyone else and startlingly beautiful to me.

In the middle of the day the sun is high and I am in my little studio selecting images. These are the quiet times my heartache waits for. When it gets bad I go outside into the garden and listen to “Stay Gold.” As the chorus rushes in I throw my body around, fists clenched, unthinking. It’s energy I cannot contain and when the song ends I fall to the ground with my heart racing, feeling better.

“What if to love and be loved’s not enough?
What if I fall and can’t bear to get up?
Oh, I wish, for once, we could stay gold.”

The whole campaign is one big adventure. We have a picnic by a river and I dive into the cold water where my ears ring with silence. We eat breakfast on a boat headed to an island at sunrise and seals wave to us. We watch fog roll over the land from atop a mountain. We roadtrip in a van to a forest with the biggest tree I’ve ever seen. We have our last dinner inside an abandoned barn.

The end of every campaign is a little hard. I begin to fall in love with the routine. Waking up before sunrise begins to feel exciting instead of hard. I fall in love with the team and they fall in love with me (even in spite of my terrible jokes and annoying fake New Zealand accent). And then I go.

I spend my last day in Auckland. I eat blueberries as I walk down the street. It’s a simple, little thing and it makes me happy.

Then I’m in Sydney and I’m delirious. All of the sleep I missed on my tour is hitting me hard. As I get off the bus a boy trips over my suitcase. It seems like a sign to befriend him so I launch into a deep conversation as though we’ve known each other all our lives. We sit together on the ferry. When we say goodbye he tells me he will never forget the advice I’d given him. I wish I was always brave enough to break through the barriers of strangers.

Dylan picks me up from the wharf. I’ve never met him before but I recognise him from a television show I used to watch. He has freckles across his face and sun-bleached hair. He’s really cute and sweet and he calls me ‘Nirri’ so I can’t help but crush on him a little bit. The sleeplessness has filled me with this manic energy and I talk all the way to Faith’s house.

Faith is sewing samples for Dylan’s clothing label. He sits on the floor drawing and I am pacing around talking and talking about all of the adventures of the past month. It’s past midnight and I should be sleeping but life feels too full of adventure and my arms are wide open.

A few nights later Dylan comes over again. I’m sitting on the couch playing guitar and he watches me for a little while, memorising the chords. My cheeks burn. He takes my guitar and plays. It’s a love song by Bright Eyes and we’re both singing together. He pulls me onto his lap and holds my hands and I embrace the fleeting love because it makes me forget I’m heartbroken.

Then my path crosses with the very boy I’m trying to forget. It is painful to be around him. To have him close enough to touch but not be able to any longer. Things are different between us now. The air is thick with the words we can’t say. We cover up our feelings with jokes. Once upon a time we thought things would work out between us. We loved each other and then we hurt each other. Now we’re here and we can’t go back.

We are both flying out on the same day. We hold each other for a long time at the airport. From his shoulder I ask, “do you think things will ever be okay between us?” and he says, “someday they will be.” But I don’t know. All I can do is hand him the letters I’ve written him that contain my heart and soul and say goodbye.

Then the loudest silence of all. The realisation that some chapters don’t have endings. Sometimes they just stop in the middle of a sentence and it’s up to me to turn the page.

I am glad you’re okay. It’s incredibly glorious yet scary to be in the merciful hands of brushing with death. I’ve been through somehow the same thing, I was deeply heartbroken once and I was never the same. It was as if you exist but it’s just the body that’s living… or so, until your soul comes back.

I’m happy you’ve began to shoot and write again. I missed this part of you so much, that even if I tried sending letters to Facebook I doubt they hardly get read. But that’s a good indication that you’ve been busy.

Again, more beautiful words have not been written. Your photos are great. I can’t help to be envious of all the beautiful fruit in that basket. Whenever I have a company that is big enough I would love to sit around with them in an open field with a basket full of fruit and just enjoy my life.

Everytime I read your texts it brings me to tears. I love the way you embrace life with it’s ups and downs and reading this reminds me of cherishing all these little moments in daily situations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings in such an honest way. Lots of love from Germany ♥

I’ve recently done the same – handed a letter to a boy to close one chapter we’d written together and that can no longer continue. Of course it doesn’t end with a simple, maybe too easy, ending, our lives are too deeply connected. But it is the start of releasing him from my life and one day it will end, without fanfares without dramatic closures – just simply by realising that my life is no longer about him. I like your writing – it always bring me to another dimension of life, to a different tranquil sphere. Keep doing what you love, it’s powerful when you share it.

Your honesty is so refreshing and your willingness to be vulnerable so incredibly admirable. Your words are like butterflies, and I want to catch every one. Delicate and beautiful and strong, all at once. Thank you for sharing this. It resonates with me in a time of personal uncertainty. I’m so glad you are safe, and alive. Xo, C.